No Aries 1 all American finest engineering. Liberty French US collaboration.The point was that the politicians want a near term rocket to replace Atlas that has no foreign parts .

Heh, there's foreign and then there's foreign.

It's highly unlikely there will be any embargo's with France.

It should be noted for a while the Delta IV's second stage's hydrogen tank was was made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries so having a foreign contractor manufacture a tank is nothing new.

I wonder could a stretched Delta IV second stage plus a BE-3 or the first stage of the H-IIA make a decent second stage on a smaller Ares I.Though in the latter the it might be desirable to substitute the LE-7A for a J-2X or two BE-3s.

At first I thought the stick was ludicrous but with the RD-180 situation maybe the concept wasn't so crazy after all.

Sorry about this but with the merger of Orbital and ATK and present Russian difficulties is Ares I back on ?

It was never off.. they've pitched it at every RFP NASA has put out since Constellation.

Ares I != Liberty.

No Aries 1 all American finest engineering. Liberty French US collaboration.The point was that the politicians want a near term rocket to replace Atlas that has no foreign parts .

Ares I had nothing to do with "politicians want a near term rocket to replace Atlas that has no foreign parts . "And Liberty? How does using an Ariane based stage not "no foreign parts"Also, Ares I was far from "all American finest engineering", it was a kludge

No Aries 1 all American finest engineering. Liberty French US collaboration.The point was that the politicians want a near term rocket to replace Atlas that has no foreign parts .

We already have two of those: Falcon and Delta. And they exist today.

Only Delta 4 Heavy is the in the ballpark of Ares 1 payload to LEO capability, and it (the world's most capable launch vehicle) is in danger of early forced retirement. Falcon 9 is not remotely in that ballpark.

No Aries 1 all American finest engineering. Liberty French US collaboration.The point was that the politicians want a near term rocket to replace Atlas that has no foreign parts .

We already have two of those: Falcon and Delta. And they exist today.

Only Delta 4 Heavy is the in the ballpark of Ares 1 payload to LEO capability, and it (the world's most capable launch vehicle) is in danger of early forced retirement. Falcon 9 is not remotely in that ballpark.

All of that is irrelevant because the question was whether it makes sense to bring back Ares I as a replacement for Atlas V. All that matters is what alternatives there are for the missions Atlas V is doing.

And I said "Falcon", not "Falcon 9". That includes both the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy variants, just as Atlas V includes a range of different variants with different performance and Delta IV includes medium and heavy variants. The Falcon Heavy variant exceeds the performance of all variants of Atlas V (and also Delta IV and Ares I).

No Aries 1 all American finest engineering. Liberty French US collaboration.The point was that the politicians want a near term rocket to replace Atlas that has no foreign parts .

We already have two of those: Falcon and Delta. And they exist today.

Only Delta 4 Heavy is the in the ballpark of Ares 1 payload to LEO capability, and it (the world's most capable launch vehicle) is in danger of early forced retirement. Falcon 9 is not remotely in that ballpark.

All of that is irrelevant because the question was whether it makes sense to bring back Ares I as a replacement for Atlas V. All that matters is what alternatives there are for the missions Atlas V is doing.

And I said "Falcon", not "Falcon 9". That includes both the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy variants, just as Atlas V includes a range of different variants with different performance and Delta IV includes medium and heavy variants. The Falcon Heavy variant exceeds the performance of all variants of Atlas V (and also Delta IV and Ares I).

Falcon Heavy does not "exist today". It won't exist until it proves itself in flight. Even then I don't think that it will match Atlas 5 performance to GTO, etc, when used the way SpaceX wants to use it (recovering stages).

No Aries 1 all American finest engineering. Liberty French US collaboration.The point was that the politicians want a near term rocket to replace Atlas that has no foreign parts .

We already have two of those: Falcon and Delta. And they exist today.

Only Delta 4 Heavy is the in the ballpark of Ares 1 payload to LEO capability, and it (the world's most capable launch vehicle) is in danger of early forced retirement. Falcon 9 is not remotely in that ballpark.

- Ed Kyle

An Ares I like LV would need a third stage about the size of a Centaur-G to perform the same missions as a heavy variant of Atlas or Delta though some missions probably could be done with the PAM-D from the Shuttle though you'd have to carry two or more in some sorta carrier to make use of the payload available.

Personally I prefer to put bounds on what "Ares I" means. It doesn't include any/all launchers with a segmented solid first stage and a hydrogen upper stage! Ares I is specifically a "crew launch vehicle" that works in combination with a "crew exploration vehicle" (e.g. Orion) that makes rendezvous in LEO with an "Ares V" cargo launch vehicle. AIUI this is the "Vision for Space Exploration."

I don't believe that vision is entirely extinguished. To the contrary I think some influential people see SLS as being a first step along a path to that future. Doesn't pushing forward the EUS keep "alive" the 5.5m tank tooling needed to manufacture an Ares I second stage?

Why didn't they consider using strap on solids like on Atlas or Delta to overcome the lack of power the second stage had to lift Orion? Were they overcompensating on safety?

The entire Aris I effort could be summarized as follows: When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. They were hellbent on making sure that it only used SRBs and J-2X, which would allow them to backdoor-fund Ares V.

Only Delta 4 Heavy is the in the ballpark of Ares 1 payload to LEO capability, and it (the world's most capable launch vehicle) is in danger of early forced retirement. Falcon 9 is not remotely in that ballpark.

All of that is irrelevant because the question was whether it makes sense to bring back Ares I as a replacement for Atlas V. All that matters is what alternatives there are for the missions Atlas V is doing. ...

An Ares I like LV would need a third stage about the size of a Centaur-G to perform the same missions as a heavy variant of Atlas or Delta though some missions probably could be done with the PAM-D from the Shuttle though you'd have to carry two or more in some sorta carrier to make use of the payload available.

Personally I prefer to put bounds on what "Ares I" means. It doesn't include any/all launchers with a segmented solid first stage and a hydrogen upper stage! Ares I is specifically a "crew launch vehicle" that works in combination with a "crew exploration vehicle" (e.g. Orion) that makes rendezvous in LEO with an "Ares V" cargo launch vehicle. AIUI this is the "Vision for Space Exploration."

I don't believe that vision is entirely extinguished. To the contrary I think some influential people see SLS as being a first step along a path to that future. Doesn't pushing forward the EUS keep "alive" the 5.5m tank tooling needed to manufacture an Ares I second stage?

Ares 1 = Liberty = NGL = Ares 1 ?This being a year old thread, I was wondering if time had allowed reflection and new ideas.

NASA was recently asked to reconsider Orion to ISS and, of course, they declared "no way, no how". The first quotes above argue for a LEO/GTO rocket to replace existing systems while sdsds holds to a crew-capable design. I thought I'd submit an Ares1 redux that fulfills both as an alternative to the problematic original or the mighty NGL's approach of air-starting a 12ft-wide solid 2nd stage.

J-2X is an essential engine for the SLS and manned-exploration programs, thus I'm assuming its production and use as the 2nd-stage engine. I'm also assuming a 5m 2nd-stage based on the Delta IV, or Vulcan, or a redesign of the Delta IV with common bulkhead, or a knockoff from elsewhere ~ whatever.Lastly, I'm using Antares' upper and orbital placement from prime contractor Orbital/ATK for GTO launches.

Boost Stage: Using Orbital/ATK's 2012 brochure (which includes 1 to 5-seg RSRMs among others), I estimated the performance of a 3.5-seg including its stepped thrust profile, drymass and a 1,200kg interstage.Upper Stage: A single J-2X and 273,900lbs propellant in a 5.5:1 O/F ratio and common bulkhead is estimated at 12.5mT dry. A 400kg interstage would be added to accommodate the ...Optional 3rd: For GTO missions a Castor 30B and it's moderate thrust is used, along with their BTS if necessary.

Payload to LEO is approximately 25mT (22-27mT depending on constraints) to 210km and a very smooth ride required for manned missions. Decreasing the solid to a 3.5-seg being the essential trait not previously used.Payload to GTO is approximately 10mT (9-11mT depending on constraints) and not surprising considering the Castor30B weighs 14mT. This is less than Delta IV Heavy, comparable to Ariane 5 and more than DIV, Atlas V or Falcon 9. However, it's not capable of direct to GSO like an RL10-based upper stage.